“Convenient Downtown Locations” assumes that there is ample public transit to and from those locations. For example, we took a train into Chicago from a small town in Iowa. There was absolutely no public transit going to that station. It was literally a 2 hour drive to the station, and that was the closest train station to us. Additionally, once we got there, we found out that our train was running 6 hours late. This wasn’t communicated to passengers until it was about 30 minutes from the scheduled departure time. This was for a train ride that took 4 hours, and was the same cost as a plane ride that would have been about 45 minutes, and the airport was about a 25 minute drive from our home.

We could have driven the whole thing in 4 hours and it would have been about 1/4 the cost.